Originally posted by Winder I had the K-7 and the K-5. I still have the K-3 and K-1. Yes, improvements have been made, but they continue to fall farther and farther behind. Even mirrorless has surpassed Ricoh in AF and that is kind of sad. Other than the Fuji GFX, I think pretty much all current generation mirrorless cameras from Sony, Fuji, or Olympus have better AF than anything Ricoh makes. The Fuji GFX is pretty awful in anything but great light.
I agree Pentax is lacking on AFC but the AF itself is very fast, quite accurate, work well in low light and with large appertures lenses. I guess results with this outdated AF and single point AF in AFC mode and back button AF work better than some want to admit. This is a similar mode to what many Nikon shooter use. It work perfectly on Pentax.
What our Pentax are not so good at is tracking/prediction of a moving subject accross AF points, but if you select the AF point yourself, it work nicely.
I see many people complaining that their A7RII or A6500 is unreliable in low light if they don't use a fast prime wide open and many of non top of the line mirrorless are simply much slower than Pentax for AF.
Pentax has to upgrade that AF and it is a bit overdue we all agree. That doesn't make the competition perfect and doesn't mean the AF is overall bad. Only some aspects, mostly subject tracking need improvement. On some aspects, the Pentax AF is actually better than many other cameras.
You also need to have decent lenses if you want the AF to work well and that was a problem with Pentax, some of their SDM designs are quite bad for AF.